Government proposes new livestock grazing rules

The Bush administration, departing from Clinton-era restrictions on managing rangeland, is proposing new rules aimed at helping livestock owners whose cattle range on public lands.

The new rules would give the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management two years, instead of one, to make grazing decisions needed to maintain healthy ranges, according to agency documents obtained Thursday by The Associated Press.

"This proposal recognizes that ranching is crucial not only to the economies of Western rural communities, but also to the history, social fabric and cultural identity of these communities," Interior Secretary Gale Norton said in a prepared statement.

Norton plans to announce the proposal in a speech today to a convention of livestock owners in Albuquerque, N.M. She describes the proposal as an attempt to improve grazing management and help continue public lands ranching in the rural West.

"This proposed rule will help public lands ranchers stay on the land," Norton said in remarks prepared for her speech to the convention. "It will do that by creating a regulatory framework that lets ranchers succeed based on sound business judgment and sustainable ranching practices."

But the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said Thursday that it expects the proposal to mark a return to practices that have allowed decades of overgrazing and other unsustainable grazing practices. The group said "the clear and short deadline of one year for action is the first step to halt grazing damage."

The new rules also would require more studies and monitoring any time the Bureau of Land Management evaluates whether health standards for rangeland are being met and reward livestock owners by letting them split ownership with the BLM for permanent improvements such as fences, wells and pipelines.

Other changes include:

---Removal of the current limit of three consecutive years under which livestock operators can retain grazing permits but not make use of them. Operators would be allowed to apply for nonuse for up to one year at a time, for conservation or business purposes.

---Elimination of long-term conservation-use grazing permits that department officials say were invalidated by a federal appeals court.

---Clarify how the Bureau of Land Management authorizes grazing when a permit is postponed because of an administrative appeal.

The proposal is to be published in the Federal Register on Dec. 8, and the BLM also plans to release a draft study of the proposal's environmental impact later this month. The public is being given at least 60 days to comment on both.